When I'm Gone
by thefreeSAMpler
Summary: All I have to say is, make sure you've read at least book I, and enjoy!


CHAPTER 1

PERCY

That year at camp was the quietest. Percy was almost killed by the lack of noise at breakfast. Of course, there were campers, just definitely not many. He remembered getting up daily, not even the rooster making noise. That was known in camp history as "the dead year".

I never expected for anything at camp to be deserted. My reasons were: A)This is Camp Half-Blood B)New kids come every year, and finally, C)If no kid dreamed of coming to Camp Half-Blood as a kid, their life was freaking sad.

This year just didn't make sense. I mean sure, a camp will have at least one 'bad' or 'off' season, but this was pretty ridiculous. I looked from my right, and then to my left. Nothing. Just when I would've given up, I spotted Chiron running up the hill

"Morning, Percy. I assume you got quite an amount of sleep last night." We-being just mainly the young staff-got to escape dinner about an hour early, with no early morning activities.

"Yes, actually," I saw his eyebrows raise in surprise. "Eleven hours and fifteen minutes, to be exact.

"Well, you can go back to your cabin if you need to. We're not expecting any new campers, today." He said with a tinge of disappointment.

"Are you sure? No help in the kitchens?"

"No, Percy." He sighed with every answer. "No shoveling after Flapjack's... business?" "No."

I tried not to be too awkward by saying any more, but as I walked away, I felt an emptiness of sorts. Like I left something unfinished. I couldn't go and talk to Annabeth about anything, she was gone on a quest to slay a Hydra taunting a Sandwich Prince in South Manhattan. She sent (through the mail) a picture of a sign that tickled her. "00.50$ icees until the building stops randomly collapsing!"

Mortals were so oblivious to the world of Monsters, gods, and Magic. Has none of the said "smart" ones come up with no theories to anything? I swear, sometimes, it just seems like they want to think there's much more than what they think-logic.

Of course, to some of the regular mortals, the thought of there being sons and daughters of gods and goddesses is completely illogical. This may seem correct, but to me, I feel like the world needs some spicing up some times.

ANNABETH

Hydras never know when to stop shoving their heads into weird business (no pun intended). Just when you wanna take a five minute Icee break, they just have to keep pushing through, their brains being no bigger than peanuts.

One of the heads lunged toward me. I spun around and stabbed it where a throat on a normal-level creature would be. It had about fourteen different pairs of lungs at the moment: it probably could do without one throat no being in function.

This was a very tedious mission. Many back at Camp thought I was crazy for taking the job. I always had my great purpose, and this time, it was for Percy. I made a deal with Chiron that if I could take down the Hydra without any help, I could teach sword art and self-defense. Hopefully, there will be at least one kid who will choose a knife.

The giant three-headed monster swung his head at me, as if he would take me out.

"Okay," I said, "now this is just annoying!"

The Hydra stood there, tilting it's head. I swung as hard as I could at its huge body, making an extremely deep gash. The twenty foot tall monster shrieked. We were outside at the moment, so I had no living clue what the humans saw.

The giant monster fell to the ground, still not yet dead. I reached a hand over to see if he would bite it off, but just the sharp movement of the reptilian reflexes.

The defeating of this great creature would reward in several ways: 1) I would be able to see Percy back at camp again, 2) I would get to sleep in an actual bed for a while at camp, and finally, 3) I finally can go and eat decent food that wasn't given to me by a mortal who thought I was a construction worker... but we won't talk about that...

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Grover the Satyr running in my direction.

"That was... AWESOME!" He yelled.

"Yeah well," I said. "Considering it took me so long, Chiron may disagree"

I decided to look in the other direction, just to make sure no 'certain death' would be unleashing right about now.

"Well," I said to Grover with a subtle sigh. "I guess we should be heading west right about now. Hopefully we could catch a taxi or something."

Grover went to the tent he set up before I started to fight the monster. He had three drawstring bags that contained Ambrosia, Nectar, and the automatic-setup-and-take-down-tent, which basically all you had to do was say 'set up' or 'take down', depending on the action you wanted it to perform.

I heard the distant, faint sound of Grover's voice, probably saying 'take down', because as soon as I heard his voice stop, I saw the tent get sucked into the tennis ball shaped tube. He put it into one of his three drawstring bags. He put one around one string of one bag around one shoulder, one string of another on the other, and gathered the two strings together in one hand and carried it.

He approached me quickly, pulling a small pamphlet out of the drawstring bag in his hand.

"Do you know what I just found in my bag?" He said, surprised and sadly ecstatic.

"No. What is that?" I asked him as he unfolded it into the eight squared piece of poster paper.

"This," He said defiantly. "This is a bus route map. One of them leaves in fifteen minutes and goes to East Manhattan."

We both laughed madly. "This is just what we needed! Good job, Goat boy." I teased, patting him on the back.

"Well, here's two very, very important questions we have to ask ourselves; one: Do you have to use the bathroom, and two: Do you mind paying my half of the thirty cents?" He said.

"Satyrs," I whispered to myself. "They get all the money, and when they do, they spend it all on tin cans."

The bus ride home was only thirty minutes, but it was anything but blissful. Grover fell asleep within the first five minutes of the ride, I had to pay 30 mortal U.S. cents, and to make everything just even more awkward and uncomfortable, he fell asleep on my arm. Luckily, the stress of this bus ride only lasted the length from the Sandwhich Prince to the bus stop outside of Half-Blood Hill (only fifteen minutes.

The second the yellow bus came to a halt, I jerked my shoulder swiftly and violently, waking Grover. His eyes opened, closed, and opened again slowly.

We got off the bus very quickly and walked a few thousand feet to get to the hill. As soon as we saw the gate, I spotted a tall figure standing just inside of the camp's boundaries. Percy, I thought to myself. I stopped for a second, gave my bags to Grover, and sprinted into Percy's large and ever so comforting embrace. I stood there for about three minutes, hugging him.


End file.
